Josh Gad doing a bad accent is somehow the least of the annoyances in Disney’s Artemis Fowl
Film Reviews Movie Review
The words “Artemis Fowl” make up a significant chunk of the dialogue in Artemis Fowl. The title character, a child criminal mastermind introduced in a series of YA fantasy novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer, has few defining traits beyond how often everyone refers to him by his full name. Under Kenneth Branagh’s featureless direction, he’s just a bratty, self-involved heir. And the only interesting thing about this irritatingly smug and cheaply campy adaptation is how uninterested it is in its own source material. Artemis Fowl, the first Disney movie to have its theatrical release completely scrapped because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is bland and incoherent, with paper-thin character development, unimaginative world building, and a lot of daddy issues.
Set in Ireland, which the film mostly treats like a prop, Artemis Fowl opens with scandal. Antiquities dealer Artemis Fowl Sr. (Colin Farrell) has been linked to various high-profile thefts of the “rarest evidence of ancient worlds” from around the United Kingdom, and the media attention outside Fowl Manor is overwhelming. “How does it feel to have a criminal for a father?” a reporter yells at the 12-year-old Artemis (Ferdia Shaw). After that setup, Artemis Fowl travels backward in time thanks to narration from the dwarf Mulch Diggums, who is being questioned by the British intelligence service MI6. (Diggums is played by Josh Gad, doing an insufferable attempt at an Irish accent that’s very Darrell Hammond-as-Sean Connery.)
For the first half of Artemis Fowl, Branagh relies on clunky plot dumps from Diggums to tell us who these characters are. We see them only as the dwarf describes them—and that includes Artemis, the film’s ostensible hero, who’s introduced surfing while Diggums waxes rhapsodic about Ireland and magic and the magical beauty of Ireland. A generous interpretation of the structure would be that the PG-rated film is catering to a younger audience by mimicking the introduce-repeat-reaffirm narrative rhythms of children’s books. But that doesn’t make it feel any less repetitive and uninspired.
Once Artemis, played with stone-faced monotony by Shaw, learns that his father has been kidnapped, he realizes that all the Irish fairy tales he was quizzed on for years are real. Zooming into the pages of Artemis Sr.’s journal, Branagh transports us to a high-tech underground world where fairies, goblins, trolls, and other magical organisms coexist. Forced to live in secret, these creatures are desperate to find an acorn-shaped, nearly holy object called the Aculos that was stolen from them. The younger Artemis vows to find it and free his father, who’s being held ransom. Unfortunately, the fairies underground, led by Commander Root (Judi Dench, really laying the Irish brogue on thick), have sent their own officer after it, too. Her name is Holly Short (Lara McDonnell) and she works for an agency called—wait for it—LEPrecon.
Artemis Fowl is at once overcomplicated, with its feuding fairy factions and allusions to the Fowl family’s grand patriarchal lineage, and underdeveloped. There is never a real sense of who this character is, beyond a rich kid who holds most everyone in contempt. Meanwhile, the villain, generically planning to “systematically wipe out all of mankind,” is never unmasked. And the film has an unfortunate tendency to sideline all of its female characters: During one climactic fight sequence, Holly gets snagged in a chandelier, leading Artemis to pick up her magical blaster and do the job of an 84-year-old officer in what is essentially the fairies’ militarized police force better than she can. Elsewhere, the film introduces Juliet (Tamara Smart), niece of the Fowl family’s butler, only to give her nothing to do but serve sandwiches and sit alone in Fowl Manor while everyone else goes on adventures—not the best way for the film to treat one of its only two Black characters.
At best, Artemis Fowl can be bizarrely cheesy. Take, for example, Judi Dench in a green cape and armor, pointy ears poking out under her bouffant hairdo, standing at the entry of her ship, growling, “Top of the morning.” More often than that, the film just dully swipes from the Hunger Games and X-Men franchises. The only real area to which Artemis Fowl seems to devote any consistent effort is the clearly Hagrid-derived Mulch Diggums, which allows Gad to amp up his shtick so severely that the rest of the film bends toward him, mostly for worse. Reverentially treated like a master criminal, given his own incongruous black-and-white interrogation sequences and snarky lines like “Most human beings are afraid of gluten. How do you think they would handle goblins?” Diggums takes up so much narrative space that he serves as more of a protagonist than Artemis himself. But then, when your main character is as dull as that snotty scion, even an irritating narrator who eats dirt and shits it out while burrowing through the Earth looks like better hero material.
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I’ll admit it’s been years since I read the series but the two things I distinctly remember about the books was that Artemis started out as a villain protagonist for the first book and than became more heroic later on, Holly was the first woman to join LEP and this was a big deal in-story. For some reason it seems like these two things were scrapped for the movie for no reason. The plot of the first novel is literally about Artemis kidnapping Holly and ransoming her back to LEP for a large quantity of gold.
I listened to it a month ago and you are correct.
Yeah. I’m not saying that movies have to stick to the books, but it sounds like they just made everything blander.
The appeal of the book series was that the protagonist is unequivocally the villain, especially in the first one.
Yep, and that made the framing interesting. Because you were in the POV of both sides, you got to see the siege play out almost like a chess match or something. This sounds like it’s just a worse version of a generic superhero story.
The first one was basically a chess match, between magical creatures and a genius with near infinite resources and his unbeatable butler. Also made it interesting because in most YA stories, there’s no good reason why they can’t just ask the adults to sort things out. But in the Artemis Fowl series, the teenager is the smartest person in the room, and not always in the right. It was a really refreshing way to handle it, and I absolutely loved the series when I was younger.
I loved it too when I was a child. I wasn’t a big fan of one of the later ones, which my English teacher thought was because I had outgrown the series. But it turned out that Colfer had just done a Hitchhiker’s Guide book and that style of writing had seeped into the Artemis Fowl book, which is a fine style in its own right but it just wasn’t the AF style.
The last 3 or so weren’t as fun as the first 5, I agree, and not just because I (and you) outgrew the series. Still not bad YA books though.
The first book is really quite brilliant. Most of it plays as kind of a Die Hard sort of narrative, with Artemis as Hans Gruber, and it works really well.
Apparently the movie weaves together the plots of the first two books, which are about as different as two adjacent books in a series could *possibly* be.
It’ll by hysterical in a sad way if Disney blames this failure on the books, when from the sounds of it they essentially gutted everything people actually liked from the books.
I agree with this and all of the other comments on this thread. I used to read the series of books to my son as a bedtime story and he adored them. So, I can’t help but feel a little betrayed by Disney. The whole point was that Artemis was a sly, evil genius (with zero physical coordination, so the part with him going badass with a gun is nonsense), who eventually redeems himself due to his friendship with the fairy world. Disney seems to have neutered the sript into the same old cookiecutter Hollywood dross.
I think about how whichever movie studio did Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series wrong, and I legit wonder if they are simply unable to properly adapt non-dystopian YA fantasy due to lack of will, faith, or being able to throw nepotism to the wind and hire people who could actually pull this stuff off.
aaaaaaah *sticks fingers in ears*As with Highlander 2, we do not talk about the Dark is Rising movie and we do our best to pretend it doesn’t exist.
They leave in a sentence about giving Holly back to LEP for a the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, well that is part of the ransom he wants.
In the book, Artemis demands a pot of gold ransom because he actually needs the money. We find out later it’s a matter of life or death, it wasn’t a frivolous wish. He successfully outplays the LEPRecon and gets the money and uses it.In the movie, Artemis throws in a demand for a pot of gold frivolously, it’s not what he wants. The LEPRecon says that they would never do that, and he disagrees but doesn’t press them on it. Because he doesn’t care about it and I guess was just trying to bother them by asking for it? We never even SEE a pot of gold in the movie, and Artemis ends the movie without ever getting anything.
I tried the first book but set it aside because Artemis was *too* smart. Like the fairies never even seemed like a credible threat because he anticipated everything his opponents would do, countered it, anticipated what they would do after that, and countered that as well. It was like, “Ok, I get it, he’s a genius.” There was no dramatic tension.
I’ve always been willing to see what Kenneth Branagh is up to because it’s bound to be interesting but Josh Gad is one of those people that whenever I learn is involved in a project I immediately lose enthusiasm.
Just out of curiosity what movies that Kenneth Branagh directed did you like? I usually find him stuffy and slow, but I’ve only seen a few of his films.
I like his Hamlet but it’s 4 hours so probably not what you are looking for.
“this is not the hamlet you’re looking for.”
His Hamlet is long, but it’s my favorite Hamlet on film.
I love his Henry V and Much Ado (and Hamlet, of course), but those were a long time ago.
“henry v” is pretty good.
As a Shakespeare fan it was nice to get a bunch of new films made, but it also felt like a series of absurd vanity projects to declare himself the “KING OF SHAKESPEARE” and cast himself as the lead in EVERYTHING.
As a Shakespeare fan it was nice to get a bunch of new films made, but
it also felt like a series of absurd vanity projects to declare himself
the “KING OF SHAKESPEARE” and cast himself as the lead in EVERYTHING.
Branagh is one of those idiots who think
1. Shakespeare is the pinnacle of English-language stage drama
2. Stage drama is the pinnacle of the English-language arts
3. I am the present Master of Shakespeare
⸫ I am the pinnacle of the English-language arts, i am qualified to do it all
Loved Dead Again.
I just remembered that he directed the first Thor movie.
I kinda like the first Thor movie.
I really like Kat Dennings, just in general. And I enjoy how they didn’t quite get Chris Hemsworth’s hair and makeup right – he looks a little bleached out. And that fire-robot attacking New Mexico is cool. But it’s about a generic as Marvel movies come. I really love the stock phrase that Branagh brought some kind of “Shakespearean” flair to a movie with a simple plot, superficial characters, and forgettable dialog.
Me too. There are dozens of us!
Which I really enjoyed… much more than THOR 2. I seem to be in the minority of Marvel fans in putting Thor in high regard but that is possibly just because he’s my favorite character and I thought Branagh did a good job in bringing the space/god/camp into the MCU in a way that hit just right.
Dead Again and Peter’s friends were really good I thought, although I haven’t watched them in decades. I liked Murder on the Orient Express but it is a bit slow-developing. I haven’t seen a lot of his Shakespeare output, but I liked his version of Henry V.
oh, yeah, “dead again.” that was good.
Dead Again is very underrated and often forgotten gem.
His Shakespeare adaptations. Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It are extremely underrated. Dead Again is also good. Peter’s Friends is a British, gen-x version of The Big Chill with a great cast (Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Imelda Staunton), which makes it insufferable but somehow very watchable.
And Thor is fine, even if it’s the beginning of his disappointing second career making shiny, anonymous studio fare that has brought us here.
Peter’s Friends is very good, deffo worth folks checking out if they haven’t seen it.
I didn’t really like LLL that much, but AYLI was pretty good.
Try out his work on the last three Fast & Furious movies. They’re a bit more lighthearted than his typical work.
His adaptation of Cinderella is by far the best of the recent Disney live-action remakes.
Hamlet IS a sight to behold, if you are so lucky as to get to see it in 70mm. I did a few years back, and it was one of the best filmgoing experiences I can remember, and well worth the four hour runtime.
dead again ain’t bad
Dead Again is a delight!
I recall Dead Again being really good, but that was a long time ago.
His Sleuth remake was a lot of fun. It was punchy and wisely relied almost entirely on two great actors (Michael Caine and Jude Law) along with a Harold Pinter script.
In The Bleak Midwinter (A Midwinter’s Tale in the US) is pretty fun.
I thought Branaugh did a good job with the first Thor movie — a lot better than his directing Frankenstein for Coppola. Also really like Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, and his Cinderella starring Lily James had the proper touch of darkness about it…The only good thing I remember about Frankenstein was John Cleese showing that yes, he can be a dramatic actor.
Dead Again is quite good and fun. That’s his best film, I think.Most of his Shakespeare films are solid to good: Much Ado especially is great; Hamlet and Henry V are pretty good; Love’s Labours Lost and As You Like It not great, but you could do worse. The thing with Branagh is that…he’s a bit of a ham. And he doesn’t always act as well as he thinks he’s acting.But any time you get Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh on screen, while they were a couple: fireworks.
Agreed about Josh Gad. Reading his description above just makes me want to run as far away as possible. But then reading that Judi Dench wears green armor, has elf ears and speaks in an Irish brogue perks me back up again. Apparently, that’s my kind of crazy…
But does Dame Judi have cat ears and whiskers…?
EPIC CROSSOVER
But a cat/
Is Not a Dog.Yes, I watched the movie version of Cats — I even liked it, and didn’t get all the intense hatred it got.
He’s surprisingly good in The Comedians, with Billy Crystal. But other than that, I’m with you; he just RADIATES overeager theater kid energy and it immediately makes me grit my teeth
Who keeps insisting that we want Josh Gad in media? The same people who tried to make Miles Teller tolerable? Other than their parents, who are fans of these guys?
I think it’s the same people that insist James Corden should be a thing.
Yes, that unfunny slag as well.
At least Corden has his infectious enthusiasm. Gad’s just…hell, I don’t know what he is exactly.
Miles Teller was really great in The Spectacular Now, but it worked because he was playing an asshole teenager you’re supposed to pity (similar to Whiplash, I guess). That energy becomes less tolerable when it’s an asshole adult you’re supposed to like – god only knows why Hollywood is pushing him as a leading man-type rather than a slimy villain.
I really wanted to watch the Nicolas Winding Refn show “Too Old to Die Young” until I learned that Teller was cast as one of the leads. I know its petty and irrational but I don’t want to look at his punchable face for 10 hours. People forget Whiplash was great because of JK Simmons’s performance. Any generic young actor could have been in Teller’s role.
We’ve found out that plenty of pretty actors are horrible people, so I’ve moved on from being bothered by “punchable faces”. I just think Miles Teller is a bit limited as an actor. (It’s also worth mentioning that he had a face injury in a car crash when he was 20, so his face specifically might seem odd because of the reconstructive surgery).
Any generic young actor with crazy jazz drumming skills – he was really playing them himself in Whiplash.
Miles Teller was also good in Whiplash, I thought.
I just feel like he’s who you cast when you can’t get Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill, or they aren’t off-putting enough. I’ve never seen him once do anything on screen to justify that choice.
I have a constantly expanding list of people who do not seem to have real appeal but keep getting these parts. Clark Duke is also on there.I would put Pete Davidson on there, but apparently he’s big among young women. I guess they’re necrophiles.
Does anyone not feel this way about Josh Gad? His success baffles me because it seems like a universally accepted fact that he sucks, but yet he works more than anyone.
The first time I ever saw him he was a Daily Show correspondent for a week then he was like everywhere.
I like Josh Gad. But, at this point, I don’t know if I like him for his work or because we both went to CMU around the same-ish time and I feel obligated to like him.
I was going to say I liked Josh Gad in Dreamworks’ Megamind! … but imdb says that was Jonah Hill. So apart from Olaf… I don’t even know what else Josh Gad has done that I could recommend.
I liked him in 1600 Penn, but his character was meant to be annoying (idiot brother of Bill Pullman’s president)
I liked just about every movie Kenneth Branagh made back in the day, including his “Henry V” which is still one of the best Shakespeare movies of all time. His work in the last decade since he’s started getting directing work again has been pretty uneven. I liked “Cinderella” way more than I thought I would and his “Murder on the Orient Express” was a lot of fun, but he could probably find better uses for his time than paycheck work like this, or that Jack Ryan movie, or “Thor”. Looking forward to “Death on the Nile”, though. Hope it does well and he can keep making Agatha Christie movies.
Much Ado About Nothing was great as well. Hamlet was pretty decent, considering the competition it had for Shakespeare adaptations about that time.But yeah, he can keep making Poirot movies as far as I’m concerned.
Keep making Poirot movies, until he ages into King Lear. 🙂
Is he doing Death on the Nile for sure? I liked Murder on the Orient Express and was expecting Kenneth to be a hammy ham sandwich, but instead, his Poirot was played just about right. They set up Nile at the end of Express – but then Fox got bought out. I sort of assumed and gave a sequel little chance of getting made.
“Death on the Nile” is already completed and is scheduled for release on Oct. 9, although of course with the plague who knows if it will be released in theaters.
Hey, well, good news. Thanks.
Gad’s “Reunited Apart” youtube series has seriously boosted his cred in my book. The Lord of the Rings episode is glorious.
I tolerated his being on the LotR cast reunion but god I wish he had just started the zoom call and then fucked off and let Taika lead it.
he absolutely killed it as a shithead gunner campus conservative in party down, i always wonder what he’d be doing if he’d had a better agent. alas
everytime i watch Henry V i think“gee, what has this Genius been up to the last twenty years?”then i look at IMDB and i realize:this is a guy looking for WORK, not expression
I literally came here to post something similar. All they had to do was mention he was in this
My younger son was excited about this when it was announced a ways back. I think I may just neglect to mention that it’s finally been released.
Because…..?
*gesticulates wildly at terrible reviews*
“no billy, you can’t watch Artemis Fowl because its is at once over-complicated and underdeveloped.”
i see. your child must only watch things that you endorse. parenting 101
How do you get from “neglect to mention it’s been released” to “prohibit child from watching”? As a parent I’m not allowed to guide my child’s media consumption, or provide recommendations? Think, McFly.
I’m going straight from “neglect to mention it’s been released” to “regicide!”
Can’t we have one conversation that doesn’t end with you trying to murder the king?
“prevent them from watching” and “prohibit them from watching”, tomato, tomahto. But its pretty close to “i hate Josh Gad, so my kids must hate josh gad too”. your kids have no agency I guess?
Yeah, those aren’t the same thing and neither of them is what I was proposing. You’re seriously fucked in the head, dude.
then you should do better with your comments, since that what I got out of it.Have they seen Frozen 2 or are you not allowing them to because Josh Gad?
I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. My original comment was obviously a joke about how the movie’s getting terrible reviews. Now somehow you’ve determined that I hate Josh Gad, even though I never referenced him in any way, and that I’m some kind of draconian censor for my kids’ content? You’re funny sometimes, but right now you’re being a huge asshole for no reason.
I just find snarkiness to be a bit much these days, esp. comments that come across as “I’m better than everyone who likes this shit” snobbishness, which I’ve grown reallly tired of, esp by the “writers” on this site. And it wasn’t “obviously a joke”, as neither was my “hate josh gad” comment apparently. Apologies, comment just rubbed me the wrong way, just let your kids form their own opinions about shit.
“I just find snarkiness to be a bit much these days”Then you may be on the wrong website. :)“just let your kids form their own opinions about shit.”I do, but I also give them context and guide them, because that’s a parent’s job.
it is to an extent, but at the same time, because I find the Marvel universe movies to be boring and redundant, I’m not going to tell my kids “ugh, don’t watch Avengers Endgame, its boring and redundant.” A few weeks ago my kids begged me to put on Trolls World Tour, I didn’t say “yuck, that treacle has gotten the worst reviews of the year” I said, “ok, I’ll set it up on Kodi, give me a few minutes” because I sure as hell ain’t paying for that shit lol
Your kids came to you asking to watch something and you said, “Sure.” If Dirtside’s kid asked to watch “Artemis Fowl,” I’m sure Dirtside would also say, “Sure.” But Dirtside isn’t going to bring this film up in conversation unless their kid does. That was the spirit of the OP. Stop talking past each other.
Just wait until he needlessly turns this into a discussion about the MCU like he always does.Oh look! He just did.
idk dude if i’m gonna go with my kid to see a movie i’m gonna be more inclined to see one that’s fun for both of us
I mean, maybe dirtside is trying to avoid a situation where their son is horribly disappointed by a bad movie that they were looking forward to? You’re making some wild assumptions without context here.
Why should children be exposed to the fact that Disney is a soulless machine that will mulch up stuff that they love purely for quick profits? Let them think Disney is purely good for a while. I bet you tell kids Santa isn’t real.
I do feel bad lying to my kids yes, but I do let them watch whatever they want (within reason of course, we’re not sitting down to Texas Chainsaw on family night) and if they don’t like it, why is it my responsibility for not “screening it for them for quality” or whatever the fuck dirtside is doing?
Quick? Profits? This film has been in development-hell for two decades and would not have turned a profit if not for COVID-19.
This would be a valid point if the criticism was based on genre snobbery or something. But so far all the reviews indicate that the film deviates wildly from everything that people praised about the book, so it’s not a terribly wild guess that someone who liked the source material would be disappointed.
Careful or you’ll take that worlds biggest douche award away from John Edward
fine, i know you’re just looking for attention but I’ll play. how does my decision to allow my kids to make up their own minds about something make me the worlds biggest douche?
Archiving this conversation to my “thank fuck I decided against having kids” file.
I understand the impulse. I discouraged my brother from watching What We Do In The Shadows because I knew damn well that he was going to end up saying “Werewolves, not swearwolves!” all over the place.
Then his wife watched it and GUESS WHAT.
I think you’re underestimating how annoying I find Josh Gad.
Josh Gad or as like to call him “Mini Hagrid”
I seriously thought the series was about an anthropomorphic duck. I guess because I only knew it by name having never read the books. Kind of wish we had a Ducktective movie instead.
Yeah, where’s my even grittier Howard the Duck reboot?
You are thinking of Duckman.
That’s fair. But you should be thinking of Duckman. Everyone should.
What the hell are you lookin’ at?
I’m ALWAYS thinking of duckman, they should bring that show back!
You may want to reconsider that. Contrarians have misinterpreted the show as an anti-PC and anti-woke soapbox that was ahead of its time.I’m very skeptical that Duckman can compete against other animated shows like Rick & Morty. Despite airing for 70 episodes, Duckman ended on a cliffhanger because the writers didn’t know how to end it. This lack of focus shows how it lasted way longer than it deserved.
I remember finding Duckman an ugly, mean-spirited show, though I see a lot of love for it online these days.
Hollywood doesn’t owe us a ducktective movie. Not after how we treated Howard.
(If the image does not show up it is Gahan Wilson’s Everybody’s Favourite Duck.)
Kenneth Branagh is starring in Nolan flick but directing this, apparent, drivel. Maybe directing is not his niche?
He directed Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing back in the 90’s and he also directed Thor.
Right, so he has experience with Shakespeare, but look at his output as a director apart from that. They range from bland (Thor) to awful (Artemis Fowl) with a lot of mediocrity in between (Jack Ryan, Murder on the Orient Express, etc.).
God I completely forgot about that Jack Ryan film. In fact, I think I forgot about it while I was watching it. Utterly utterly inept.
Been racking my brains and i finally recalled the one stand out bit from Jack Ryaniirc- Wife finds hidden gun and looks appalled – Jack : “It’s okay, I’m a covert agent”- Wife : “oh thank god, I thought you were having an affair”HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh my god, it’s like something from an Asylum movie or something
I dunno if I’d call Thor as a point in his favor.
“Dead Again” was also pretty good, and I never hear anyone mention it. It was a sort of supernatural reincarnation noir, with Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson as a detective and his amnesiac client who may or may not be the reincarnation of a doomed couple involved in a 1940’s murder case (also played, in flashbacks, by Branagh and Thompson). Andy Garcia, Robin Williams and Derek Jacobi are in it as well.
One great touch on that one was that they realized all of Emma Thompson’s lines for the first half were basically just “I don’t know” over and over, so rather than saddle her with that, the character was made mute for that period.
Dead Again is a good movie for the most part, well acted with a lot of twist and turns. But that finale is so ridiculously over the top that it becomes glorious.
I have a vague memory of lots and lots of scissors.
It was OK. His accent was terrible. My gang were all super fans back then (yes, we were super-KB fans), so we all went on opening day. Then it turned out his character had the same name as one of our group, so that was worth a few laughs
We’re a lot more forgiving of actors than directors. We generally judge actors by their best roles, rather than the ones they take for a paycheck—so Ben Kingsley (just to name someone at random) is remembered Ghandi and Don Logan from Sexy Beast, and Cosmo from Sneakers, without much mind to the fact that there’s a whole lot of Bloodraynes and Species and Sound of Thunders on his resume, because an actor’s gotta get paid. Branagh’s been a good director (his Shakespeare movies, Dead Again, Peter’s Friends) but recently he also has a ton of directing jobs he’s taken for a paycheck and/or for a meaty starring role. Can’t say I’m the biggest fan of his later output, but a guy’s gotta get paid.
I like the idea that while making Dunkirk and Tenet that Kenneth Branagh would chat about Artemis Fowl to Nolan.“I’m making a movie based on this book about a kid who meets fairies and I’m gonna strip out all the stuff people like and stick Josh gad in there! What do you think Chris?”“I don’t give a shit Ken. Now go stand over there so my Imax camera can get a better shot”
Christopher Nolan is (or, at least, was) a Michael Bay fan, so who knows. https://www.slashfilm.com/christopher-nolan-loves-watching-michael-bay-movies/
DEAD AGAIN is a frickin blast.
Darrell Hammond-as-Sean Connery“Sho Trebek… we meet again. You think you’re sho shmart with your dego mustache and greashy hair.”
The day is mine! I’ll take Famous Titties for $400.
The Penis Mightier!Also, one of my favorite real-life Jeopardy moments in recent history was when they actually had S-Words as a category.
Seamus.IT BEGAN WITH A BLOODY S!
They actually had several rounds that were entirely categories from SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketches, according to the celebrity jeopardy wikipedia page
“What did I JUST say about ethnic slurs?!”
“Well well well Trebek, fancy sheeing you here…it’sh been a while”“Not long enough”“That’s not what your mother said lasht night”
My favorite one ever:Trebek: “This is the sound a doggy makes.”
Connery: “Moo.”
Trebek: “That is incorrect.”
Connery: “Well that’sh the shound yer mother made lasht night.”I can’t wait to use that one on anyone who calls me “sheeple”.
“I’ll take The Rapists for 200″
“That’s therapists, and I think you know that”
Holy shit at that lead picture… from the moment they decided to throw away every single plot point from the books I knew it was going to be shit. They seemed to have gone the extra mile to make it extra garbage.
Yeah the images give a strong Spy kids Vibe. Which was “fine” for a look 20 years ago (the original was 2001) even the last entry (2011) looked better design wise than this. I’m not sure what they were going for.
My partner read the books as a child. When I informed them there was a movie adaptation and showed them the trailer, they were almost incandescently mad. Just from a few minutes they could tell Disney had missed every possible point about the concept.
YEP. My brother and I were huge fans of the books when we were kids and we’ve been waiting for 15 years for these movies. I gave up hope right after the leaked Disney casting asides showed they were going to try to make Artemis an innocent kid (which DEFEATS THE ENTIRE POINT of the books. It’s like starting the Harry Potter movies as Harry as the headmaster of Hogwarts). But not my brother.Poor kid help up hope until he saw the trailer and he still plans on watching it because he’s a masochist, I guess?God I’m so angry. This makes the Percy Jackson movies look like a masterpiece. Fans waited over 20 years for this????
I was curious and then Josh Gad… So nevermind. Why is he cast in so many things? There are other mediocre people in the world. Does he get paid scale or offer to cater or something?
I was wondering that too. And he nearly always gets cast as an insufferable asshole, so is he being pranked all the time by the studio? “Gad wants to be in this, and he’ll cater, so have the writers add a character that everybody will want to punch in the face.”
And he’s not even good at playing an insufferable asshole. It’s more like if you took the 3rd best kid in a high school drama class — the one with the superiority complex who acts all pouty when everyone is congratulating the two obviously better kids — and got him to play an insufferable asshole.
You probably get this a lot, but… username checks out
If they’re going for that specific look with a comedic background may I suggest Harvey Guillen from here on out?
Seriously. Guillen is basically Gad, except funnier and more likable. Maybe Gad’s a better singer, never heard Guillen sing as far as I recall.
He can keep Frozen.
Frozen and Book of Mormon are probably the two big “this guy is a draw” thing that continually helps him getting hire.
Just speculation here, he might also be pleasant to work with.
Josh Gad is the last of the Jack Black ripoffs that Hollywood foisted upon us in the late 2000s.
I was always more partial to Dan Fogler in terms of poor man’s jacks black.
I’m generally ok with Jack Black he seems to have plateaued and his comedic stylings aren’t just loud and annoying these days. Gad is just all the kinda annoying things JB is known for concentrated to insufferable.
In the lead up to WWDITS I was so relieved that it was Harvey Guillen and not Gad. I mean I love Armando Ianucci shows to a fault and yet one ep of Avenue 6 with Gad killed that show for me.
Harvey on the other hand as Guillermo (Billermo?) is just *chefs kiss*
Guillermo Buillermo
Three words: Book of Mormon.
I’m not as offended by Gad as others here, but I do think that he got a lot of career mileage out of being in a honest-to-God (pun intended) cultural phenomenon.
The South Park guys really suck sometimes makes sense they created this annoyance.
Indeed, I saw it in London last year and the actor playing that role was just doing a (very good) Gad impression.
I think he has some compromising photos.“I heard you don’t want to cast me. Well, take a look at these and reconsider. The man in those picture is doing some pretty unsavoury things, isn’t he?”“Josh, these are photos of you.”“Yes, and if you don’t give me the part, I’ll keep showing them to you.”“…get this man to make-up.”
He’s holding Disney’s frozen head hostage.
On a Disney level, he probably makes them a lot of money due to Olaf. Admittedly much of Olaf is down to him, so presumably the deal is to get Gad as Olaf, you have to cast him live action Disney projects.
His dad owns a van that the movie people can use to carry their stuff around.
Man he must have some pictures of somebody in a blackmail file. That is all I can think.. He is literally the worst.
Book of Mormon used him well enough, I’d say. Everything else I find him very annoying in.
Gad’s narration is terrible. Deeply grating. He sounds like Howie Mandel doing a parody of a bad movie voice-over.
Checked this out because who doesn’t like a good trainwreck? (This is trainwreck, but too irritating to be so-bad-it’s-fun like, say, Jupiter Rising. It’s really just bad. Gad but one of many reasons it’s unwatchable.)
Oops: Jupiter Ascending. Now *that* is a funny movie. This slog, in contrast, is DOA.
The names of some of the actors make Artemis Fowl seem like an outrageous fantasyland: Ferdia Shaw, Nonso Anozie, Judi Dench.
good god do the costumes/makeup in that still look atrocious.
On a previous article I compared the green suit to something I saw on a Disney Channel sitcom, and somebody else said it looks like they are costumed for a sketch parody of an actual movie.
ooh, those are good ones. I’m getting a whiff of Syfy channel original movie too.
Ooh, that was me! I’ve been cited!
Getting a “Santa Claus vs. the Martians” vibe on that elf costume.
I vaguely remember reading the first couple books when they came out and thinking they weren’t that bad, so this feels like a bit of a shame. But considering Eoin Colfer did that awful Hitchhiker’s Guide book, it feels a bit more like poetic justice.
one of my pet peeves in novels is when characters are only or constantly referred to by their first & last names. it becomes even more annoying when you hear the recorded version. i just want to keep screaming, “i know who that is!”
Ten or so years ago I saw a *very* independent movie whose main characters both had “funny” names, and in every scene, even if they were the only two guys in the room, they’d just keep appending the other guy’s name to every sentence they said to each other.
I imagine there’s a tvtrope for that.
On film, it’s great in What We Do In The Shadows, with Colin Robinson only ever referred to as Colin Robinson, each character has a different way of saying his name too.Also from the mouth of Matt Berry in Toast of London – Clem FandangoTbh, it’s all in the timing.
yes, the exception to the rule. i like that his name is colinrobinson.
Then there’s the Divergent series, where people only have first names (at least in the movies).
Some people do that to me, I’ve grown accustomed to it. I have a noun as a last name that people enjoy saying with my 1 syllable first name.
I think that’s a trope of late XIX early XX century novels. As an example I love, Jules Verne’s “Mich[a]el Strogoff”
In the books, he’s NOT always referred to as Artemis Fowl. Holly Short calls him “Mud Boy”, various other fairies call him just “human”, his friends call him “Arty”, etc.
In fairness, I know at least a couple people who are always called their full name by their friends/coworkers. They have both have* monosyllabic first and last names, though.*One of them is a woman who got married and took her husband’s last name and it kind of ruined it. We still call her “Firstname Newlastname,” but it feels weird.
I find it funny how the AVC staff love Josh Gad and find a way to get an article about him in at least once, sometimes twice a week, and the commentariate ALL seem to despise him (I can’t say that we all do, but it sure does seem like it). I find him insufferable and it really does make no sense for him to get so much work constantly. Maybe there is some truth to him doing the catering for free as someone else mentioned. Maybe he works for minimum wage. “Get Galifanakis!!”“We can’t afford Galifanakis!!”“Get Gad!! He caters too!!”
Cats and now this? Does Dame Judi Dench have a secret gambling addiction that needs funding?
I’m paraphrasing (because I can’t quite remember it exactly), but Lance Henriksen once said, “I do two kinds of movies—my movies, and alimony movies.”
At her age, she’s likely just doing stuff that sounds fun. She’s worked with Kenneth a lot, so presumably that’s how she got roped into this.
Honestly, she could make nothing but crap until the day she dies, and her legacy would be completely safe.
There’s a reason Disney happily punted on this to D+ after numerous release date delays
When I saw the header image here on an earlier article, I couldn’t believe it was supposed to be a theatrical release from freakin’ Disney. Reading this, I can’t believe it was directed by Kenneth Brannagh. I can’t believe this was Disney’s attempt to break into the Harry Potter and YA adaptation game. And apparently Josh Gad digs by eating dirt and shitting it out. I kind of wish they had just delayed and then done a theatrical release, I’m morbidly curious how much of a faceplant this $125(!) million turd would have been for Disney.
“This film is going to be a disaster! I wish there were some excuse for shunting it to streaming that won’t look like an admission of failure.”*coronavirus pandemic breaks out*“I can’t help but feel a little guilty.”
Disney clearly caused this whole pandemic due to improper use of a cursed monkey paw.
The government clearly needs to start regulating those things. They cause nothing but trouble.
Now we know who had the monkey paw…
Judi Dench’s choice of roles of late have me wondering if her children shouldn’t be seeking power of attorney privileges.
Her children might be the ones pushing Dame Judi into all these terrible films to fatten up the bank account.
Gad! It’s elder abuse! Alert CPS!
The Kenneth Branagh factor can’t be ignored. I’m sure he’s calling in favors with friends >.>
Release the butthole cut!(I’ve decided I’m going to demand this of all Judy Dench movies from now on.)
The butthole cut of Shakespeare In Love is wall to wall Weinstein’s butthole, though.
Maybe there’s astronauts, maybe there’s aliens…
‘Mrs Brown’s Butthole’.
Uh, having seen this movie, that would be this movie.
Okay so I ask this every time a new kids movie comes out. How bad is it really? Like if I setup the outdoor screen, put some tasty meat on the BBQ and the family settles in to watch it. How much weed do I need to make it bare-able?
It has Josh Gad in it, so presumably a lot of weed will be needed.
He’s the good part of this one.
It was awful, I was hitting 10s forward mercilessly.
I love hate-watching movies to live-tweet them to my best friend, and honestly, this isn’t even worth hate-watching. It’s monumentally terrible in ways that aren’t even entertaining.
Looks like he’s still exclusively using orange and teal as his color palette; which was the most distracting thing about Murder on the Orient Express.
Yes, but does Butler box a giant troll?
Nope, not exactly, or if he did, I had fast forwarded though it. There is a big fight scene with the Troll, but everyone takes part, and no boxing.
FFFUUUUUUUUUCCCKKK that, then
No, Butler gets mandhandled by the troll and barely helps at all. No suit of armor, no respect from the fairies to be the only human to EVER go toe to toe with a troll, none of that. It’s all awful.
That was literally all I wanted from the movie.
^edit. tried to reply to Thezmage. yes, that’s all i wanted to see too, and they turned the troll fight scene into some bull in a china shop scene with a chandelier as the hero.
Not knowing anything about the source, I hoped it would be a Men In Black movie with elves. Curses.
It looks like it’s ‘Men in Black: International’ with elves.
That’s not a bad take on the book, but this seems to be nothing like the book.
I hate to dunk on a little kid, but it was clear from the trailer that the actor playing Artemis wasn’t bringing any charisma or life to the role. Sounds like the film has several other problems, but you can’t really get past one that glaring.
The trailer seemed so bizarre to me, because the main kid seemed to go from squeaky child voice to sullen teenager voice mid scene. Presumably he hit puberty in the middle of the long and probably heavily reshot production.
Sullen and Squeaky is my new band name.
i read the first book as a kid and all i remember is artemis was an obnoxious smarmy piece of crap, there was a butler NAMED butler (dumb) and the book would constantly refer to in-universe terms it hadn’t explained yet. idk why it was ever a successful series.
I don’t know if I’m enjoying Judi Dench’s “Fuck it this is extremely goofy sign me up” phase but I bet she is.
It was going to be difficult to do Artemis Fowl properly… Not even a little bit surprised it ended up being just yet another ‘meh’ screenplay of an incredible and magical book series.
The whole conceit of the source material is that Artemis is a young, evil genius who kidnaps a fairy to restore his family fortune. I don’t understand a movie where he isn’t the villain protagonist of the story.
Disney was probably scared to make the protagonist a villain because some corporate dipshit said that it might lower profits by like 2.3% or something (only to dump it on D+ anyway).
Yet they call him a criminal mastermind a few times in the movie related to nothing.
Literally the only crime he commits during the film is kidnapping Holly, & he only is able to do so out of sheer dumb luck that she showed up. “Criminal mastermind” my butt.
There’s a deleted scene where he fatally poisons a fairy and then extorts her before giving her the antidote. The only serious crime he does was literally deleted from the movie.
I don’t get it, Disney generally does fine in animation but their live action stuff (apart from Star Wars arguably) is consistenly terrible.
Apart from Star Wars… LOL Really? I think you meant apart from Marvel. I find few fans of SW:TROS, me included.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Marvel. Rise of Skywalker is bad, but its not nearly as bad as this or any of their remakes of animated classics. But I’m really just remarking on the stark difference in quality between their animated movies and their live action stuff, throughout the company’s history. Animated Disney movies almost always work despite being formulaic, and are always recognizably Disney in style, like they carry a certain visual stamp. But I’ve never felt like there’s anything unifying about their live action movies, other than a kind of blandness.
I know what you were saying and I get it. It wasn’t always this way either. When I was a kid I would say they were known for “better” live action, and the animated movies were at their worst. It has been a very long time since they produced good live action that wasn’t just a rehash of stuff they already owned.
Marvel is also bad. Except for guardians 1 and the taika waititi thor.
If I am a movie executive, I wonder why the hell why I’m supposed to green light this. I saw the ads and i’m going, “so is this a kids’ Men in Black? Is that why he’s wearing a suit and sunglasses”
Wipe out all of mankind? I recently watched a series about the hero struggling to move from temp work to full time employment that had had higher stakes than the last six ‘wipe out all mankind’ films I’ve seen.
What show was that?
Why can’t Disney make successful live-action films that aren’t Marvel, Star Wars, or remakes of their own animated hits. Marvel seems to be autonomously run, by people who know what they’re doing. Star Wars is still going strong because of the massive popularity established before Disney bought it, even though the reaction to the Disney SW films has varied wildly. Disney’s live-action remakes of their animated hits have the built-in fanbase for the originals to propel them. But for whatever reason they bungle anything outside of that. Is this a case of them micromanaging the life out of a film, to the appeal of no one?I haven’t read the Artemis Fowl books, but it seems like the franchise could have been a goldmine in the right hands. Maybe not on the level of Harry Potter, but who knows?
You basically answered your own question, & very thoroughly at that.
Magic Men In Black?
It honestly sounds like the people involved in making this actively hate the source material. I know Colfer had said he’s ok with the changes (And BOY are there changes) but let’s be real, he wasn’t going to rock the boat here.
Presumably they paid Colfer a fee to adapt the thing in the first place and from then on he’d just be happy if he got to meet a famous actor or whatever.
This feels like an adaptation that should have come out like 10 years ago when we were still all in on YA adaptations and fantasy.
I’m bummed that that Unwind adaptation never got off the ground. Now there is a series with a deliciously evil premise.
I can’t agree more with the review. I won’t waste any more of my life going back to rewatch this crap to see if I missed something important that would explain what was going on. Why was this even made?? Nothing like the books.
I read this book when it came out so long ago. I remember it being a charming, funny, and silly romp. This all seems so dreadful, casting aside. The subsequent books in the series, at least the first couple I read, were not nearly as fun.
(Diggums is played by Josh Gad, doing an insufferable attempt at an Irish accent that’s very Darrell Hammond-as-Sean Connery.)Having Diggums going on about how he fucked Artemis’ mom like Alec Trebeck’s mom sounds pretty funny.
I tried to watch it but gave up after about half an hour – glad to see I am not alone in finding it an unsatisfactory mishmash of a film, with an insufferable uber-privileged white kid main character. Went back to Avatar reruns on Netflix instead.
The book worked because the uber-privileged white kid was a villain. Rewriting it to make him a hero was definitely a choice!
Branagh and Zack Snyder have more in common than I realized until right now.
I just watched the trailer and wow, how over-wrought and CGI heavy! People talk about the sorts of films where you need to ‘turn off your brain’ to enjoy it. This one you’d need to shut down everything except occipital lobe. You’d have to shut down your cerebellum to keep yourself from walking out of the room.
so…better than Rise of Skywalker, then?
This movie was terrible and I’m glad I didn’t have to pay anything to watch it since I’m still getting Disney Plus for free.
D+ grade for a D+ release. Apropos.
I loved the Artemis Fowl books, and there is NO WAY he would be out surfing. This movie sound like a travesty.
Yeah, watched it with the kid yesterday. It’s really not good. But Dench has fun with her role, as well as Gad (who is a knockoff Hagrid with a few funny moments). There’s one scene with Gad where it seems like Branagh watched Guardians of Galaxy and thought “I should do something like this in Artemis Fowl.” It’s a bizarre mess.
Saw an early cut… they say Artemis is a“criminal mastermind” like a dozen times, and I couldn’t point to ONE criminal or vaguely criminal thing Artie did in the film outside of being kind of a jerk at times. And they’d completely cut out Hong Chau’s character, which at least had one of the more interesting images from the original trailer.
I watched it with medium (not high) hopes. It was awful. The only thing that was like the books were the names. A movie so bad even my kids, who like EVERYTHING, hated it.
Wonder if the plan is to eat the losses on the movie in the hopes that it catches on just enough to launch another animated series. Could easily see Disney trying to turn this in to another Kim Possible type show (with fairies).
It’s fascinating how Disney paid millions for the rights to
these books and then decided to remove the main thing that makes them
interesting. The entire hook of the Artemis Fowl novels is that the
title character is a supervillain, but in the movie, he’s not. He’s just some kid who misses his dad. Remove the villain stuff from this franchise and you’re basically
making a Harry Potter movie without any magic. You’re making Back to the Future without time travel. You’re making
Ghostbusters except in the first scene Egon proves that ghosts aren’t
real so the boys just keep their teaching jobs. I could go on.It’s just amazing to me that Disney would set out to make the most boring possible version of this thing. At least they pulled that off.
I read this review and was so excited to watch this movie because I absolutely love hate-watching trash, but this was agonizing. It is a bad movie, terrible in ways that are not even entertaining. It’s not even worth hate-watching. Judi Dench is ridiculous but somehow not hammy enough; the plot is pointless; there are totally unearned moments that are meant to be emotional; there are characters introduced that do almost nothing (Juliet? The forgettable villain with a face?). It’s so, so, so bad.